


with eyes that watch the world (and can't forget)

by walking_through_autumn



Category: D.Gray-man, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 22:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/958119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walking_through_autumn/pseuds/walking_through_autumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He meets a man in his mid-thirties, a man dressed like nobody he's ever seen before, with eyes that are a hundred years old. He listens to a story that the world has forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with eyes that watch the world (and can't forget)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the SnK Kink Meme. 
> 
> Title taken from "Vincent" by Don McLean.

He meets him just outside the empty station, at the edge of a forest, in a clearing where they can see the stars. The man doesn’t seem alarmed or wary, just curious, eyes flicking from his white hair to his face before he invites him to share the fire. Allen isn’t one to reject kind offers from strangers and he settles, warming his body by the fire, slightly panicked when Timcanpy emerges from his pocket. But the stranger doesn’t seem shocked, just watches Timcanpy flutter around before he shrugs and returns his attention to the fire.

They talk. About harmless things, where they’re going next, what time the train is going to arrive, and Allen observes him until he asks, tone light,

“How long?”

“Hmm?”

“How long have you been alive, Sir?”

In the darkness, in the flickering light cast by the campfire, he sees the man’s lips curve in a slow, small smile. For some reason it makes him shiver, but he prides himself on keeping his emotions in check. So he smiles too and they lock gazes for a long time. The golden golem flutters from its perch on his head.

“You’re perceptive,” the man says, something amused and dark in his tone. He draws a knee up and rests an arm on it, turning his gaze back to the fire but not really looking at it. The fire is reflected in his glassy eyes. “How long have I been alive, indeed.”

He dresses like nobody Allen has ever seen before. He would think the man is somebody from an organization like The Black Order, but there is no aim in the man’s eyes. He seems to be, like he had told Allen, a traveller, wandering through the world in search of something even he isn’t sure of. Allen hugs his knees closer to his chest and tosses a piece of wood into the fire. The fire flickers and sends sparks flying their way. Neither of them flinch.

“I don’t know. Hundreds of years, maybe. So long I can’t remember.”

Allen nods. He had guessed as much. The man had the eyes of a person who had seen too much of the world. Allen had heard tales from Mana, from the people he meets in the streets, from the circus. Night walkers, people doomed to never sleep, to never tire. Spirits that wander with a human face, clinging onto a wisp of something mortal. People laugh and brush off these stories or let it haunt their nightmares. But Allen knows of living nightmares, the Millennium Earl who he feels like he has met a lifetime before, so he believes the man even if he cannot trust him.

“Will you tell me your story?” he asks. Nights like these, with the next train hours away and the stars keeping them company – these nights are the best for stories. Timcanpy flutters and nestles deeper into his hair.

“Will you believe me?” the man asks.

“I think I will. There are strange things in the world.”

The man laughs. There’s a tired quality, nothing of humour in it, but beneath it there’s a burn of anger, of hatred, of passion, a burn that has never faded away over the centuries this man has lived. “My name is Eren Jaegar,” he says.

“Eren,” Allen says, testing the name out on his tongue, before he offers, “Allen Walker.”

“Allen.” He nods. “I’ve not told anyone this before.”

“Do you need me to swear secrecy?”

Eren snorts. Maybe he should be insulted, but the man seems amused at something else. “What I’ve fought and seen, nobody would believe it anyway. Nobody believes in your Earl and AKUMAs either.”

Allen smiles. “But you do.” _You’ve seen them_ , he adds in his mind.

“Of course.”

“You’re a strong man.” To not succumb to the Earl, to not even weaken at the thought that the dead can be brought back. Much stronger than Allen will ever be, but the brittleness and helplessness Allen can see beneath his surface – it’s what had made Allen curious in the first place.

“The people I know – ” he shakes his head and smiles, bitter and proud – “they’d rather be eaten alive than to live on in my body.”

“Eaten alive,” Allen says, thoughtful, “is that what your monsters did?”

Eren’s fingers twitch against his knee. When he grins it seems manic. “My monsters. That’s one way to put it. They do. They’re giants that eat people. And for the longest time we had no idea why.”

He thinks about it. Thinks of giant beings, as tall as the buildings in the nearest city, picking up humans and eating them. Thinks of the revived souls killing their loved ones and squeezing themselves into the body. Remembers the night Mana was called back. He presses down on his stomach and thinks he’d rather be eaten.

“Now that I think about it, I’d rather be eaten too, you know. Not what your Earl does. That’s sick,” Eren says, wrinkling his nose. When he does that it’s like he’s not in a body that’s in the mid thirties. He might be Allen’s age all over again. “But I guess the, what, the host isn’t the one in pain, it’s the soul, yeah?”

“The soul can never be at rest. Unless they’re exorcised.”

“Which is what you’re going to do, right? Be the one exorcising them.”

Allen grins. “Anybody ever told you you’re smart?”

Eren snorts. “Nobody ever did. The smart one’s Armin. And he’s dead.” As is everybody from his world, Allen thinks but doesn’t say. “I’m just an idiot who’s lived long enough that I can, I dunno, I can sort of tell.”

“Why can’t you die?” Allen asks, curious.

“There’s nobody to kill me,” he replies, simple as that. That smile lights up his face again, manic, off the edge. “The only man who could is dead.”

Allen hums. “I wish I could help you. But I can only exorcise souls.”

“Isn’t my soul filthy enough?”

“Souls in AKUMAs. I can’t do anything for living souls,” Allen corrects.

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

Eren throws a stick into the fire and says, “Pity. Who did you try to revive?”

Allen stiffens the slightest before he relaxes and smiles at Eren. Eren grins back at him, too-old eyes in a still youthful face. “You’re a dangerous man, Eren Jaegar.”

“Pfft. Who are we trying to kid?” Eren counters.

“Touche.” Allen shifts and pets Timcanpy, who seems to be fretting and pulling at his hair. “I once had an adopted father.”

“Ah.” Eren ponders the fire for a while. “I once had a father who used me as a test subject.”

“Wow. I’m sorry,” Allen says. Mana might have been insane and might have named him after a dog, but he’s pretty sure he hadn’t been used as some sort of experiment. Maybe. Hopefully. Who knows what Marian Cross had been hiding from him?

“It’s a long time ago. He’s dead too.” Eren frowns. “What am I saying? Everyone’s dead.”

“There aren’t others like you?”

When Eren replies his voice is soft and raw, “There are. But I killed them.” His hands clench on a piece of wood. “And I don’t regret it.”

The fire crackles. For a cold night Eren seems unaffected by the chill. Allen moves closer to the fire and stares at it as well, wondering what sort of things Eren is seeing in it. The flames dance and distort before his eyes. “Did you kill all the giants?”

He senses more than he sees Eren shaking his head. “Not all of them by myself. There were really strong soldiers.” Pride shines in his eyes when he thinks of them. “My adopted sister, she killed so many of them. We travelled together after the war, before she died. And my captain, he was the only one who could kill me. But he died in the final battle.”

Allen nods and says, softly, “I wondered if you might be an exorcist.”

“I don’t think anyone would want me as an exorcist,” Eren says, tone flat.

“Why not? You had a strong enough will to last through the war.”

Eren laughs. He laughs and laughs, and he laughs so long Allen starts to wonder if he’s alright. He throws more sticks into the fire and waits for him to calm down. When Eren does stop laughing he wipes away the tears from his eyes and says, “I was just a stupid boy. Hardly understood what I was getting into. And now? I’m just a stupid man, wandering the world even when I’ve seen everything already. If there’s a God, your God maybe, he obviously hates me.”

“Maybe he’s keeping you alive for a reason,” Allen suggests. Maybe just so he can give him an Innocence at one point. Maybe Eren will be an exorcist too, one that cannot die, since anybody who knew how to kill him is no longer here. The thought sends a slight thrill through Allen. What will the Earl think?

Eren snorts. “Yeah. To punish me, obviously.”

“I don’t think so,” Allen says, slow and firm. “There must be a reason for everything.” Because if there isn’t, what could explain Mana leaving the curse on him, what would explain Cross taking him in as a disciple, why would he be travelling to find The Black Order? There has to be something. Some order he cannot see.

“Maybe. Maybe there is,” Eren says, but Allen gets the feeling that he’s mocking him. Allen smiles back at him, challenging. “You’re so young, Allen Walker.”

“Well, younger than you at any rate.”

“True. I bet even your Millennium Earl is younger than me.”

“He is called the Millennium Earl for a reason, you know,” Allen says, though now that Eren’s said it he thinks about it seriously.

Eren shakes his head. “If he had lived for a thousand years, he would have been there. When we fought the giants.”

But what if he had, just that Eren didn’t know? What if he had been biding his time, but the soldiers, war battered and torn and hardened, just didn’t think of calling for their loved ones to return? They must have burnt the bodies. Ashes to ashes, choked apologies to the family members. What if the Earl had been waiting, waiting, waiting, but had never been able to lay a hand?

What if he had and had kept quiet, building his army, broken family member by family member, soldier by soldier, until one day he took them all away and everybody just attributed it to the consequences of war?

“Yes,” Allen says, tired and scared all at once, scared for the first time in years. “He would have been.”

Eren nods. The fire in his eyes flicker out and all that’s left, when Allen looks at him, is a weary man in his thirties, catching and reflecting the flames in eyes that have seen the world. Eyes that have seen joy but remember only pain.

In the morning, they will take the same train. Eren Jaegar will alight three stops before him and disappear through the woods, heading somewhere Allen would never know. And he will become a distant memory. If the war ends in Allen’s lifetime he might see him again. If they do, Allen thinks they will once more talk of monsters that are no more than nightmares and stories in children’s books.

If they do, maybe it means Allen would have become a monster like he is.


End file.
